


A Thousand Words

by nickless



Category: Alice (2009)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-25
Updated: 2010-01-25
Packaged: 2017-10-22 18:47:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/241337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nickless/pseuds/nickless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>tied together by stuff too difficult to explain to someone new</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Thousand Words

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first thing I’ve “written” in about 7 years, and I didn’t actually write a single word. (A friend described it as “[found](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Found_poetry) fanfiction,” which works for me.) Every line is taken directly from a piece of Brian Andreas' [StoryPeople](http://www.storypeople.com) art. I saw a story and thought it sounded exactly like something Hatter would say, exactly the way he’d say it, and in the middle of trying to figure out how to work a fic around it I started thinking of all the _other_ StoryPeople bits that would be perfect and then my Muse popped up to say “Hey, I wonder if it’d be possible to write a fic using ONLY StoryPeople quotes” and once she latches onto something that wacktastic, she doesn’t let go. And there goes my Friday night.

When I first met her, I knew in a moment I would have to spend the next few days re-arranging my mind so there'd be room for her to stay.

“I was waiting for such a long time,” she said. “I thought you forgot.”

“It's hard to forget,” I said, “when there is such an empty space when you are gone.”

“You're the strangest person I ever met,” she said, and I said “You too” and we decided we'd know each other a long time.

 

*****

 

“I end up explaining everything anyway,” he said, “so I might as well do it from the beginning.”

“When I was five,” he said, “my family forgot and left me at the fair. I wandered around in the bright sounds and smells of hot sawdust and cotton candy for hours. It was already too late by the time my parents found me. I haven't been fit for decent society since.”

He tried hard to tell the truth but it wasn't always that obvious, so usually he just said the first thing that came to mind. “I kept having dreams I was naked,” he said. “I think that's why I learned to talk so fast.”

He told me that the night his mother died, there were storms and far away he saw purple lightning and someone left the window open and the room filled with a swirl of butterflies and she slipped out quietly without anyone noticing and I'm sure the grief was softer because of that.

Everything changed the day he figured out there was exactly enough time for the important things in his life. “I once had a garden filled with flowers that grew only on dark thoughts but they need constant attention and one day I decided I had better things to do.”

“I've never worried about getting older,” he said, “I've been too busy worrying about getting caught.”

 

*****

 

“You can't just say stuff like that,” she told me, “people will think you're serious,” and I nodded and said “I know” and “Won't they be surprised when they finally figure it out” and she shook her head and said she should probably make plans then for a backup boyfriend.

“What are the rules?” I said.

And she said, “Do exactly what I want whenever I want, make no demands of me whatsoever and love me forever, no questions asked.”

And I said, “How do you win?”

And she said, “You don't understand. I'm the only one who wins,” and then she laughed and clapped her hands. “Isn't it a great game?” she said. “Your job is to focus on my personal happiness,” she said, “and I've got big plans, so break time is over.”

~~~~~

“I'm feeling overdressed,” she said and he held her close and said as far as he was concerned she was always that way and her eyes glowed softly in the light of his desire.

“I have to apologize beforehand for anything that happens,” he told her. “I haven't been dating that long and my lizard brain still acts up sometimes. The only thing that separates me from the animals is a lot of words, so when I'm not talking much, the gap closes really quick.”

 

*****

 

He said the hat kept his soul from drifting off and I asked if he knew this from experience and he laughed and said all his best bits were from National Geographic.

“The clock is a conspiracy and a crime against humanity and I would not own one except I miss appointments without it.” This keeps time in three different time zones, but none of them are the one he's usually in.

He won the grand prize of a vacuum cleaner and all the canned goods he could carry and when they told him he couldn't believe it. “I thought I was buying drink tickets,” he said.

He told me the best way to make coffee was to add an egg, so I did and he looked at the strands floating in his cup and decided to have tea instead.

 

*****

 

I've always liked the time before dawn because there's no one around to remind me who I'm supposed to be, so it's easier to remember who I am. There are some days when no matter what I say it feels like I'm far away in another country and whoever is doing the translating has had far too much to drink.

Except for running naked through the forest, there’s not a lot I miss.

~~~~~

We sat side by side in the morning light and looked out at the future together, tied together by stuff too difficult to explain to someone new.

“How do you know?” she said and the answers fell like feathers, or the first snowflakes of November, light, and without words I looked in her eyes and smiled.

“You just know,” I said.

She laid on my chest and her breathing filled me almost to beyond what I could hold, deciding everything is falling into place perfectly as long as you don't get too picky about what you mean by place. Or perfectly.

“I read once that the ancient Egyptians had fifty words for sand and the Eskimos had a hundred words for snow. I wish I had a thousand words for love, but all that comes to mind is the way you move against me while you sleep and there are no words for that.”

“If I love you with all my heart,” she said, “what will you give me?” And then she stopped and said I didn't have to answer that because she was going to do it anyway.

 

*****

 

She learned to love him before he thought it was even possible, so he didn't have a chance to hide and mess it up and while it was a little scary at times, mainly he could not even imagine the world without her there.

He loved her for almost everything she was and she decided that was enough to let him stay for a very long time.

**Author's Note:**

> Every line can be found [here](http://www.storypeople.com) on a piece of StoryPeople art. I only changed punctuation marks, capital letters, line breaks, symbols/numbers to words, and one “husband” to “boyfriend.”


End file.
